50 pages • 1 hour read
Jane YolenThe Devil's Arithmetic
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Hannah wakes up and hopes she is in the present. She misses her family in New Rochelle. Unfortunately for her, she remains in the past, where Shmuel tells her he is afraid to get married—not being married but getting married. Hannah thinks everyone has something that makes them afraid. Shots scare Hannah, and snakes frighten her mom. Shmuel laughs—there can’t be many snakes in Lublin. Hannah protests: She’s not from Lublin, a Polish city, but New Rochelle. Shmuel assumes New Rochelle is a street or avenue in Lublin, and Hannah tries to tell him otherwise. The exchange reinforces Shmuel’s impression of Hannah as a peculiar girl.
During breakfast, Hannah is upset that there’s no cereal, doughnuts, or white bread. The cream floating in her milk confuses her. Gitl says white bread is for rich people; she wonders if they put cream in the milk in Lublin; and she and her brother continue to tease her over New Rochelle.
Yitzchak arrives. He says Hannah looks like she’s feeling better. He has two cages of chickens—his wedding gift for Shmuel. They talk awkwardly about the wedding night. Shmuel says Gitl and Hannah will stay with Fayge’s family, so that Shmuel and his bride Fayge can have privacy. Gitl doesn’t think they should talk about the wedding night near Hannah, but she already knows what the term suggests due to General Hospital. Gitl thinks Hannah is talking about a Lublin hospital, not a daytime soap opera.
Yitzchak calls his two children inside. They will help take care of the animals. Gitl maintains that Yitzchak is a monster, but Hannah thinks he’s sweet.
Chapter 6 Summary
In the room they share, Gitl dresses Hannah for the wedding. Hannah wears the dress Gitl wore to Shmuel’s Bar Mitzvah. Gitl thinks everyone will be jealous of Hannah, but Hannah thinks the dress is a rag. Gitl says it might be a shmatte (rag) in Lublin, but in their Polish village, it’s a dress for a princess. Embarrassed, Hannah blushes.
The dress fits Hannah perfectly. She also wears stockings, blue velvet ribbons, and black Mary Janes. Looking over herself in the mirror, Hannah notices her braces and lipstick are gone. She has the same smile, hair, and face shape as Hannah Stern, but she also has the old-fashioned look of Chaya Abramowicz.
People gather boisterously outside Gitl’s home. Hannah is shy but meets other girls in the town—Shifre, Esther, Yente, and Rachel. Rachel says she will be Hannah’s best friend, but Hannah already has a best friend, Rosemary. The girls are shocked that Hannah’s best friend is Catholic, a non-Jewish person—a “goy.”
Hannah studies the girls’ faces to tell them apart. The girls ask about Lublin, so Hannah tells them about her big house in New Rochelle with indoor bathrooms. The girls tease one another, and then Hannah tells them about shopping and school. The girls aren’t allowed to attend school, which, for them, is yeshivah or Jewish schooling. Esther says a girl dressed as a boy to sneak into yeshivah. Hannah brings up the movie Yentl (1983), where Barbra Streisand plays a character that dresses as a boy so she can study the Torah.
Chapter 7 Summary
Hannah tells the girls stories from other movies and books, like Star Wars (1977), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), The Wizard of Oz (1939), “Hansel and Gretel” (1812), and Little Women (1868). The stories make her popular. In New Rochelle, she’s not popular. There’s a clique, the Snubs, that won’t speak to her even though three members are in her Hebrew class, and one member is Rosemary’s cousin.
The merry party walks through the forest. They hear music and sing. Rachel notices a badchan—a Jewish clown or entertainer. The girls say Fayge’s dad, Rabbi Boruch, gives Fayge special treatment. He paid for the badchan and let her marry Shmuel for love instead of another man for money. Hannah thinks it’s normal to marry someone out of love. The girls think it’s normal to marry someone selected by their parents.
The Jewish jester comes over to the girls and sings a song to Hannah about her mix of youth and wisdom. He also tells her that her name means life; he wishes her a long one. The Jewish jester makes Hannah and her new friends laugh.
Chapter 8 Summary
The party grows livelier as people from Viosk, Fayge’s village, join the festivities. Gitl introduces Hannah to Fayge, and Hannah thinks the bride is as beautiful as a movie star. Fayge compliments Hannah’s dress, and Gitl tells her, more or less, I told you so. Fayge lets Hannah ride on the wagon, and tells Hannah she’s afraid about marrying. Hannah tells her Shmuel said something similar this morning. Fayge hugs Hannah and announces that they will be best friends.
The party arrives at Viosk. Hannah sees the stores and notices the dominance of brown, like the color of old pictures. Fayge asks her dad about the black cars and army trucks in front of the synagogue. Neither Rabbi Boruch nor Shmuel knows what’s going on.
A man wearing black and medals steps out of the car and calls the party over to him. The badchan calls the man the Angel of Death. Hannah asks the year, and Fayge tells her the Jewish year, 5701. The Christian year is 1942. Hannah warns the wedding party that the men are Nazis and they will kill six million Jewish people. They need to run. The rabbi doesn’t believe Hannah and insists that they confront the Nazis.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
Shmuel shows his humor and emotional side when he confides in Hannah about his fear of getting married. Using hyperbole or exaggerated language for laughs, he asks her: “Do you think it strange, little Chaya, that I—Shmuel Abramowicz—with an arm like a tree and, as Gitl says, a head like a stone, should be afraid of getting married?” (37). The confusion over Lublin and New Rochelle adds to the humor and evokes The Preservation of Identity. Hannah’s modern identity links to New Rochelle, but her historical identity as Chaya connects her to Lublin.
Hannah’s displeasure over breakfast shows that she still feels safe in her modern identity. Through her, the novel explores the theme of Privilege, Suffering, and Life or Death. She asks: “No cereal? No doughnuts? No white bread for toast?” Gitl replies: “White bread is for rich folk, not for farmers” (39), reinforcing her and Shmuel’s identity as working-class farmers. Her reply adds to the irony and humor—in the present-day United States, white bread doesn’t typically symbolize wealth.
Gitl’s antagonistic relationship with Yitzchak evokes motifs of romance and gender. Shmuel is marrying Fayge that day, but Gitl doesn’t want to marry Yitzchak anytime soon. She has no feelings for him. She says: “Yitzchak the butcher is a monster. All he wants is a nurse for his children” (32). Gitl rejects the role of child caretaker people often assign to women. The allusions to Shmuel and Fayge’s wedding night suggest romance, and allow Hannah to showcase her maturity. Her understanding of sexual intimacy from General Hospital also adds humor.
Hannah’s disapproval of Gitl’s dress further characterizes her as bratty and privileged. She tells Gitl: “It’s a rag, a shmatte.” This diction, the Yiddish word “shmatte,” underscores the Jewish world portrayed in the novel. Gitl and Hannah’s different viewpoints on the dress paint a contrast between Hannah’s snobbishness and Gitl’s down-to-earth character. Yet Hannah isn’t a total snob. She doesn’t want to hurt Gitl’s feelings, and her face shows an “instant apology through burning cheeks” (46).
The mirror scene furthers the complex exploration of identity. Minus the lipstick and braces, Hannah still looks like Hannah from New Rochelle, but she’s also “Chaya Abramowicz, something haunting, like one of the old photographs on Grandma Belle’s grand piano” (47). It’s like she’s two people, or, alternately, a ghost, Chaya, has taken over Hannah. Yet the narrator still calls her Hannah, showing that internally she is the same.
Hannah’s interaction with the group of girls creates another juxtaposition. Hannah’s cosmopolitan identity contrasts with the other girls’ sheltered lives. Yolen shows how gender norms impacted life for girls living in 1942 Poland: The girls are not allowed to attend yeshivah. To attend, one must disguise oneself as a boy. Explorations of gender and romance continue when the girls express their surprise that Fayge gets to marry out of love and not someone their parents picked out.
Hannah’s familiarity with movies and famous stories makes her popular. In New Rochelle, Hannah isn’t popular, but the girls in the Jewish village appreciate her and welcome her into the community. As one girl breathlessly tells her: “I am Rachel. I am going to be your best friend” (50). Yolen uses imagery to create a jolly atmosphere. The narrative brings in media and pop culture again when Hannah notes Fayge’s “movie star” good looks. Details like the singing and the badchan add to the festive environment.
Fayge reinforces the strong sense of community when she tells Hannah: “We are going to be such friends, you and I. Best friends. Life will be good to us forever and ever, I know” (62). This last line represents tragic irony. Within moments, the wedding party will be faced with Nazis. Yolen juxtaposes the joyful wedding ceremony with the genocidal Nazis. Hannah uses her memories of the Holocaust to try and warn everyone, but the party dismisses her knowledge. Rabbi Boruch tells her: “There will always be Nazis among us. No, my child, do not tremble before mere men. It is God before whom we must tremble” (65). To emphasize the ominousness of the Nazis, Yolen uses imagery. The black uniforms and boots reveal that the Nazis are scary and bring death.
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